RAAus AGM special resolution vote

[Admin]

The vote on taking one board member from Qld and add one to Vic has not been successful

 

426 votes

 

258 yes

 

168 no

 

49 void

 

To be successful required a 75% yes

 

 

[dazza 38]

Interesting or members being complacent.

 

 

[Guest basscheffers]

Voting in the AGM is too hard; you have to either be there or nominate someone who is there to vote for you.

 

If they used basic postal (or even internet) voting, a lot more people would be likely to care.

 

 

[facthunter]

percentage of eligible members.

 

IF you required 75% of ELIGIBLE membership as a criteria, you would never be able to get ANYTHING changed. Normally a quorum (Minimum attendance) is stipulated to prevent a specified (defined in the rules, in this case 75%) majority of a SMALL group carrying the day. IF you don't have a quorum the meeting lapses and has to be reconvened. The 21 days NOTICE OF MEETING (any General meeting special or Annual) should allow for interested members to attend or arrange proxies. This is a legal requirement for ANY registered body (Incorporated etc.) This gives the interested parties protection from being "ambushed" by an unrepresentative group. ( In theory). The lack of interest is a factor that bothers me. If you are not interested enough to put in a bit of time (and vote) How can you whinge if the outcome is not what you want? Nev

 

 

[Spin]

I'm with Bass, we are too big and dispersed a membership to effectively rely on proxies. I'm willing to bet that a majority of the members have no idea what their local board member looks like or how to contact him or her. Sure they could dig out an old magazine and get the contact details from that, but a simple postal vote or a properly authenticated electronic vote is the way to go. I know my local board member to greet at the field, but it still took a bit of fiddling around to get his details and even then I missed out through an oversight on my part.

 

To my mind the abysmal voter turnout is indicative of a system failure rather than the level of voter apathy it appears to illustrate.

 

 

[Guest basscheffers]

a properly authenticated electronic vote is the way to go

Easy. With the current proxy system, there is virtually no authentication anyway.

Ask a voter for their member number, surname and date of birth and the chance of anyone having access to all that info for anyone other than themselves is almost nil. Let alone for a significant number of other people to change the outcome of an election.

 

No need to over complicate things; we are not electing a national government here...

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

• It is farcical that a Proxy has to nominate a person attending the meeting. That means that if a person carrying a number of proxy votes is indisposed and cannot attend for some reason, those members are deprived of a vote. That isn't equitable. Public companies don't work that way! It could be simply fixed by changing the Proxy Form to simply nominate "The Chairman of the meeting". Unfortunately that would require a change to the Constitution. Doh!
   
   
  
• Perhaps the majority of members felt that what the Board members did for the organisation was more important than where they hailed from. Again, public companies don't operate this way. It is an artifact of an association structure whose originators felt it needed geographic representation on the board and making it by member quotas was an easy choice.
   
   
  

 

 

Maybe in the future the model could change to simply electing the best qualified people to perform the functions regardless of their domicile. Communication is much easier these days. I guess it depends heavily on whether most members believe in physical presence communication as being the predominant expectation, in which case domicile remains important.

 

 

[Guest basscheffers]

I would think that with easy internet voting, you'll get a lot more than 1000 voters every time without an ammendment to require it.

 

However, the consitution is quite specific about the proxy form required to be used, so there would need to be an ammendment to change that.

 

What I can't find in the constitution is how board members are elected. It only hints at the possibility of postal votes, not a requirement of it. So in that case, there probably is no need for an ammendment to allow internet voting.

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

...A couple of things continue to worry me...

 

It seems 1 member can propose an ammendment to the constitution...which must then be put to the AGM and passed/defeated by the majority of votes present and proxies. According to some Board members that could be the Board plus 2 members!!

 

Surely constitutional amendments need a 'critical' mass of support to be put forward.

 

AND, this needs to be reflected in the constitution.

 

I would suggest that any amendment needs the signed support of 5% of membership...before it gets 'a run'.

Unless members become vexatious I don't think it requires a change. It is perhaps not as bad as you think. It does require 5% of members to require a General Meeting, and the vehicle for proposing a change to the Constitution is via a Special Resolution" which can only be put to either a General meeting or an Annual General Meeting. Failing the 5% support it would occur at the next scheduled GM for which the requisite notice period is able to be complied with (21 days).

 

As notices and indeed the Proxy forms are sent with the magazine, there is no incremental cost difference unless 5% demand an unscheduled GM.

 

The amendment recently proposed (and defeated) was put forward by a subcommittee of the Board....I suggest that this process cease.

...

A Subcommittee is created by the Board to examine and report back on a topic or to perform some activity. Thus is is done under the Board's auspicies. The Board then voted on the recommendation and approved putting it to the members.

 

So in this case it was at least a majority of the Board members voting at the Board meeting who made the decision to put it to the members, not just one or two people.

 

To suggest that the Board cannot recommend constitutional change and put that to the members will not get past the ACT Corporate Affairs department. ie. the change to the Constitution would not succeed, even if every member voted in favour.

 

Something that has to be realised, and I'm sticking my neck out here by assuming that the ACT has similar Association legislative provisions to Victoria 9of which I'm familiar) is that the governing Rules of the Association are derived from three sources:-

 

1. The Associations Act (ACT). This is the highest authority. It creates rules that are included by reference into the Constitution and cannot be overridden.
    
    
   
2. The "Model Rules" defined in the The Associations Act (ACT). This sets out the minimum rule areas and suggested default rules. Any rule in the "Model Rules" which is not specifically overridden by the Constitution is included by reference. An example would be that voting by Proxy or in Person is the only method of voting. If you want to eliminate the right to vote by proxy, then the Constitution must have a clause specifically indicating that voting by Proxy is disallowed.
    
    
   
3. The Constitution. This is the lowest level authority and where the Association customises the rules to work in the way that the members want it to operate. The proviso is that the initial constitution and subsequently any changes have to be submitted to the Corporate Affairs Department for ratification. If they don't ratify the rules as valid, the constitution remains unchanged.
    
    
   

 

 

 

For this reason Bas, you will need to look at the ACT Associations Act, the Model Rules and the Constitution as well to determine the full set of rules and for instance what voting methods are valid. This may also be where the Board (read committee) election process is defined. If it is the same as specified in the Act or Model Rules, there's no need to put it in the Constitution except for easier reference.

 

Sorry guys, I don't have the time at the moment to go through the Act and Model Rules for ACT.